Computers are ubiquitous in everyday life. However, instead of having ‘a computer’, users tend to have, or interact with, lots of different computers. For instance, a typical user may have a desktop computer at work, a laptop at home, a Smartphone, a pad computer, a video game console, and/or an electronic book, among others. Further, the user tends to interact with other computers that are integrated into other devices. For example, the user's car likely has a computer that the user interacts with to get directions, listen to music, etc. Various user controls have been developed for these different types of computers. For instance, a mouse and a physical keyboard tend to be the most common way of interacting with and controlling a desktop computer. Mice were not convenient with notebook computers which tend to use a trackpad-type device instead. Neither mice nor trackpads were feasible with Smartphones and pad type computers which instead tend to have touch sensitive screens (e.g. virtual keyboards) which the user can contact to control the device.
Each of these control technologies has disadvantages. For instance, controlling devices by contacting the touch screen tends to make smudges all over the screen and/or is rendered inoperable if the user is wearing gloves. Potentially more importantly is that these control technologies do not lend themselves to use across all of the device types. As a result the user has to learn different techniques for controlling his/her different devices. For example, assume that in the course of a day the user listens to music on each of his/her computing devices and wants to turn off the music. When listening on the desktop the user likely uses the mouse to turn a music playing application from ‘play’ to ‘stop’. The user may use the notebook's trackpad in a similar manner. In the car, the user may use a specific hardware switch to stop the music. On the Smartphone of the pad-type computer, the user may touch the ‘stop’ icon on the touch screen. This lack of continuity is inconvenient. Further, this inconvenience is magnified when the user tries to control a computer with which the user is unfamiliar. The present concepts relate to techniques that can be utilized to control a computer and can be readily applied to any (or all) computers, such as those listed above.